From Now On

We’re doing our annual sermon series called Crosstown Basics in which we reflect on our mission statement: “making disciples of Jesus by exposing people to credible gospel community.” We are considering what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and also emphasizing the three essential ingredients for how disciples are made. We believe that the Bible teaches that disciples of Jesus are made only by the gospel, in community, and on mission.

This morning, we look again at the essential ingredient of the gospel in making disciples of Jesus. The gospel is the Bible’s central message, so of course it is essential for making disciples of Jesus. But how is it essential? What role does the gospel play in forming us into disciples of Jesus? We say that the gospel must be accepted, must be believed, that it is the message by which we are saved. But then what? How does the gospel continue to have relevance for us in the long process of making a person into a disciple of Jesus?

Today, I want to say it this way: those who believe the gospel and desire to be disciples of Jesus will find themselves compelled to live by the gospel’s claim that in Jesus God’s new creation has arrived. In other words, the gospel offers us a complete worldview and to believe the gospel is to adopt the view of the world that the gospel gives to us and to live accordingly.

From our text today, I want us to see how the gospel keeps our attention on Christ, shows us the achievement of Christ, and makes us ambassadors for Christ.

Attention on Christ

First, the gospel is essential for making disciples of Jesus because it will keep our attention on Christ.

The Gospel Is All About Jesus

When we talk about the gospel, or the central message of the Christian faith, we are talking about Jesus, the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in the first century of the modern era. We are talking about how we view him as a person and how we view his life. Whatever else we might say about the Bible, about Christianity, about doctrine, about faith, about the gospel itself—and there is so much to say—it still all comes down to this: it is all about Jesus, or we have completely missed the point.

So, any discussion about the gospel is essentially about this one question: “What do you think of Jesus?” Since we are not talking about a fictional character, it is a real question, as real as if we were asking it about anyone else in history. “What do you think of Abraham Lincoln? What do you think of Martin Luther King? What do you think of Donald Trump?” At least some of those questions are sure to bring out some serious opinions from virtually anyone you ask.

So, what do you think of Jesus?

It is sad that there are still many people all over the world who would say, “I’ve never heard of him.” It is also sad that many who have heard of him would just shrug their shoulders and essentially say, “I don’t think much about him,” essentially because Jesus is not a contemporary person who is in the headlines every day. Whatever you might think of so consequential a person as Constantine the Great, who cares too much about a person who has been dead for well over 1500 years?

Of course, most of us are Christians, so we think much of Jesus, don’t we? Or do we? And what exactly do we think of him? The answer to that question is essentially the answer we must give to what the gospel is and what the Bible is all about.

How Do You See Jesus?

Notice here, in the middle of verse 16, Paul says, “Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” What does it mean to regard “Christ according to the flesh” and in what other way might we be able to regard him?

The phrase “to regard (someone or something) according to the flesh” refers to the way in which one evaluates, measures, or judges another person in light of all the evidence he can see.[1] To not regard someone that way means, not that the evidence that can be seen is all wrong, but that the conclusion reached from that evidence is wrong.

For example, Paul “once regarded Christ according to the flesh,” taking in all the evidence about him and concluding that a supposed Messiah who had been crucified had to be a fraud. You can’t go around claiming to be Israel’s promised Messiah and the world’s Savior and end up dead. Conclusion: those who go on saying that Jesus is the Messiah are wrong and need to be corrected. They may even be dangerous and need to be silenced.

Now, few people in our day think as negatively about Jesus as people like Paul did. History, we might say, has been good to Jesus. So what do people think of Jesus today? A good man and a wise teacher, perhaps, or a revolutionary for the oppressed, or a non-violent, peace-promoter, or a charismatic leader of moral reform? There’s good evidence for thinking of him in these kinds of ways, but none of them hit the target and are no closer to the truth than Jesus’s own contemporaries who thought him to be Elijah or some other prophet (Mk 8:28).[2]

How easy it is to have the wrong perspective on Jesus, to evaluate him “according to the flesh.” We need new eyes for seeing him and evaluating him. Even the biblical terms that are used to identify him—Messiah (Christ), Savior, Lord, Son of God—do we who claim to be his people know what these things mean, what it is we are affirming about Jesus?

For Paul, there was a time in which he thought of Jesus as a messianic fraud. A would-be savior whose lie was revealed at Calvary’s cross. That is what all the evidence pointed to. But then something happened that had changed Paul’s perspective on Christ. His encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus is the defining moment in that change of perspective, which gave him new eyes in which to see Jesus, no longer as a fake, no longer as a blasphemer, but as the defining person of all history.

Paul had a change in perspective on how he put together all the evidence about Jesus. And so must you and I if we want to be disciples of Jesus.

What Was God Up To?

Because, here’s the thing. The Christian claim, the Christian gospel, is that when we see Jesus, when we examine his life, we see not just the things Jesus did. We see what God did. Whatever Jesus was doing, God was doing. Yes, of course, we might say that since after all we Christians believe that Jesus is God, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at him “according to the flesh.” No, he didn’t have a halo hovering over his head. He was a true human being, like you and me. And there’s no evidence that any of Jesus’s followers had the doctrine of incarnation firmly in view as they listened to him, saw him, touched him, and lived with him.

Here in verses 18-19, Paul can talk like this:

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. . .

So, this is what the gospel tells us. It tells us that God was doing something through Christ, that God was up to something in Christ. If you want to know who God is and you want to know what God is up to, the place to begin and the place to go to over and over again is Jesus. This is what the gospel does. It keeps us focused on Jesus, and that is essential if one wishes to be his disciple.

The Achievement of Christ

Second, the gospel shows us the achievement of Christ. What did Jesus accomplish? Here are three things.

The Reconciliation of the World to God

We just read, in verse 19, that Christ achieved the reconciliation of the world to God. Without the achievement of Christ, there is tension, there is conflict between God and the world he made. More specifically in this context, there is conflict between God and the humans he made to govern his world. But in Christ, God has given the solution to that conflict.

Paul writes in shorthand here, not going into details about the various theories of the atonement or wading in to the theology of how exactly he has reconciled the world to himself in Christ. Other texts of Scripture tell us more. All he says here is that in Christ God has provided absolution for our trespasses. He has taken the initiative to see reconciliation happen and provided the basis for it to happen in Jesus, but reconciliation requires us to accept the provision, which not everyone will do.[3]

Still, this is one of the great achievements of Jesus that the gospel announces to us. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8 tells us, because in “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh . . . [God] condemned sin in [Christ’s] flesh (Rom 8:1, 3). Sin, which keeps us alienated from God and under the condemnation of death, can no longer hold us under its power once we are united to Christ.

Inaugurating the New Creation

Now how do we know that (other than by the simple fact that the Bible says so!)? Well, in some ways, Paul can draw that conclusion because of a second achievement of Christ that he mentions here. Not only do we see in Christ the provision of reconciliation with God; we also see in Christ the inauguration of new creation.

“If anyone is in Christ,” he says in verse 17, “he is a new creation.” That is one way to translate the verse, which reads literally if anyone in Christ new creation. Since Paul never uses the word creation to refer to an individual person, and since the concept of “new creation” in Jewish thought is “far more sweeping than individual transformation,” it seems better to understand Paul to be saying that if anyone is united to Christ, “there is (the) new creation.”[4]

This is no empty spiritual or religious slogan about some resolution we’ve made to be a new person or a new lease on life that we claim to have found. “New creation” is the fulfillment of the entire biblical plot line. What is the biblical story all about? How shall we summarize it? It is the story of creation (In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth) and the hope of new creation, and what Paul says here is daring. He says that if anyone—yes anyone—comes to be united to Jesus, there we begin to see the realization of future hope.

This is incredibly important for us as disciples of Jesus, and too many remain ignorant of this crucial claim. Many Christians are focused on the future and what big thing God will do some day but seem to have forgotten that the biggest day in human history has already come. In Jesus of Nazareth, the promised new creation has dawned!

As Christians, we are obligated to read our New Testaments as the definitive interpretation of the Old Testament. Our task as Christian disciples is to “carefully allow the New Testament to show us how the Old Testament is brought to fulfillment in Christ."[5] As the author of Hebrews declares

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world (Heb 1:1-2).

And if God created the world through his Son, is it any surprise that he is making his new creation through him, too? And it is all happening already and right now: “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).

Now, brothers and sisters, what if we believed it? What if we began to live like we did believe it? What if, just as a thought experiment, we began to live like we were already living in the promised future? What if we lived as if we had nothing to lose, not because we had lost all hope, but precisely because we had begun to see the realization of it?

What kind of persons do you imagine we might be? Does it look a little more like Jesus? Then perhaps, just perhaps, that’s exactly how we’re supposed to live.

“From now on, therefore,” Paul says in verse 16, “we regard no one according to the flesh.” Because of how we now see Christ, the one who has inaugurated the long-awaited new creation, we just can’t look at anyone else the same way any more. How do we see them? We see them as either already “in Christ” and intertwined with the glorious new creation, or we must see them as those who are to be eagerly invited and joyfully welcomed into it. One way we cannot see others is as enemies. All people are colleagues for the kingdom or wanted colleagues. Now just imagine what would happen if all Christians really did regard others that way. What difference would it make in your neighborhood, in our workplaces, in our national politics?

Delivering Us From Slavery

One more achievement of Christ must be noticed here. Not only do we see in Christ the provision of reconciliation with God; not only do we see in Christ the inauguration of new creation; verses 14-15 show us that in Christ we have also found deliverance from the most oppressive master the world has ever known: our own selves.

Verses 14-15 are yet another shorthand way of defining the gospel. “One has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” That first part we are most familiar with. Christ died for us. His death was our death. He died as our substitute.

But if you see the cross that way, then you must take it further. He not only died for us, but verse 15 also says he was raised for us, for our sake. Both his death and his resurrection are substitutionary. Paul says elsewhere that Christ “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11).‌

You see, the gospel of Jesus, the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection, is not only the answer to the question of what happens to us when we die. It’s not even mainly about that. Look again at the conclusion Paul has now drawn about Jesus: “and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Jesus did not die merely to keep us from going to hell. He died to save us from the hellish life of living for ourselves by obligating us to live for him. Already. Right now.

The Gospel Makes Us Ambassadors for Christ

This, too, the gospel proclaims to us. You see, the gospel also tells us that we are ambassadors for Christ.

The Role of the Ambassador

That’s what Paul calls himself in verse 20, and also in Ephesians 6:20. An ambassador is an official of one kingdom sent as a representative and spokesman for their kingdom to some other kingdom. I don’t think Paul was speaking metaphorically. He represented a very real kingdom, the kingdom of God that had been inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The question is, do we see ourselves as ambassadors for Christ and for his kingdom? And do we know the values and virtues of the king that we represent?

It is imperative that we do because, as verse 20 says, God is making his appeal through his ambassadors. And then, in verse 1 of the next chapter he says, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you.” This idea of working with God is a regular theme. In 2 Corinthians alone and up to this point, we can already hear Paul saying things like, “You also must help us by prayer” (2 Cor 1:11) and offering thanks to God for spreading “the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” through us (2 Cor 2:14).

The Joyful Demand on an Ambassador

Oh what a privilege it is to be an ambassador of the great king and his eternal kingdom. But also, what a responsibility!

Ambassadors are not free to live however they want. They must live as representatives of their king and his kingdom or they cannot be an ambassador. This is what the gospel has to do with making disciples of Jesus. If the gospel is viewed merely as a transaction that settles the question of what happens to us when we die, we will not grasp the point.

If we are ambassadors, then from now on we are obligated to no longer live for ourselves but for him who loved us and gave himself up for us. If we are ambassadors, then from now on we must not only proclaim the good news that there’s a new king in town, we must also live in that reality. There are, we might say, rules to live by, but even non-Christians can see that denying ourselves is an important part of human flourishing. “When Jesus tells us we must die to live and gives us rules to live by, he is inviting us to a deeper, truer kind of flourishing.”[6] He’s inviting us into the joyful life of the kingdom of God.

The Shape of an Ambassador

To be disciples of Jesus, ambassadors for Christ, we must believe the good news that Jesus is Lord, and we must take it in, embody it, live in its reality. As Paul says, in verse one of chapter 6, we must not receive the grace of God in vain as if this is a message one could truly receive and remain unaffected by it. He cites from the prophet Isaiah, who told of a coming day of salvation, and then boldly declares in verse 2, “Behold, now is the day of salvation.”

And so our Lord summons us to be his disciples, to learn to live as citizens of his kingdom. It will not be easy; that goes without saying. But why say “no” to the one who has loved us and gave his life for us? “The love of Christ controls us,” Paul says back in 5:14. Indeed, if we have not come to see in the cross of Christ the compelling love of Jesus, then we cannot be his disciples. After all, a disciple aims to become like his master, and the only way we can be ambassadors of Jesus is if we are willing to take on the same cross-shaped life he lived.

That’s what Paul seems to be saying at the end of chapter 5. The one who knew no sin was made to be sin for our sake, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He became like us so that we might find ourselves becoming in him the embodiment of God’s own righteousness, that is his steadfast love to fulfill his promise.[7]God fulfilled his promise in a cross; expect that the lives of his disciples will take on the same shape.

It would be surprising if it were otherwise. What role, then, does the gospel play in our quest to make disciples of Jesus, indeed to be made ourselves disciples of Jesus? Just what would a credible gospel community look like? The gospel tells us the place to start, with a cross and an empty tomb urging us to die with Christ to the old world and to be alive with Christ in the new creation he has inaugurated.

This will take some learning. This will take some practice. Let’s learn how to do it together, by God’s grace.‌

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[1] Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 427. [2] David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians, vol. 29, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 285-86. [3] Garland, 2 Corinthians, 293. [4] Garland, 2 Corinthians, 286-87. [5] Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants: A Concise Biblical Theology(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 28. [6] Josh Chatraw, Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2020), 102. [7] This verse is “a statement, as the whole of the last three chapters have been, about [Paul’s] own ministry. He has been called not just to speak about the fact that God has been faithful to the covenant; he is called to embody that faithfulness, to have it worked out, as he has been arguing in chapters 4 and 5, in his own ‘death’ and new life, in his own getting ready to stand before the Messiah’s judgment seat, and above all in his own answering love and devotion to the Messiah who had loved him so much.” Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 2004), 66.